The process of bringing Conservative Catholics into the Republican movement is taking just about as long and so far we only have the observant ones.
Which is to say the Reagan Democrats were already motivated to vote Republican and had done so before, and with the full acquisition of the black vote, began to do so on the state and local levels.
For the most part the two great coalition political parties in this country GROW by adding or attracting factions ~ individual conversions are of a lesser consequence.
The lesson is this ~ don't count your chickens twice ~ once as eggs and once as parts in the fry pan. You get your voters from your base, and the base is huge ~ certainly far more than the 63+ million 'W' was able to draw, or the 69 million 'obamugabe' found ~ in either party.
It is a mistake to abandon 40% of your Republican base of Socons to attract a couple of guys who write for Time magazine.
Historically, at least since 1952, the most successful candidate campaigns electorally not only held virtually their entire base, but attracted large numbers of voters from the opposite party.
Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon(72),Reagan, and Bush(88) all put up popular and electoral vote totals that swamped the other guy. None of them abandoned their base to achieve those landslides.